Arethusa's mental picture of her father had been very clear. All this while she had been looking for the handsome youth of the wavy dark hair, eccentrically long, and the graceful Italian military cape. And she had been looking for him without adding a single year to his age, perfectly confident she would know him anywhere.
Ross had really been on time, despite his "fooling." He had arrived before the first passenger left Arethusa's train. And he had waited until every human being had gone before starting to leave himself, so he was the lone man Arethusa saw questioning the gatekeeper.
Elinor's last suggestion that the daughter might resemble her mother had been taken literally, and all these moments Ross's search had been for a tiny, dainty bit of a girl with cornflower eyes. When the crowd had somewhat thinned, he had noticed Arethusa and her prettiness and her height, standing so forlornly by herself, had mentally labeled Miss Letitia's costuming, "a Godey's Ladies' Book relic," and had turned away again to his search for the Dresden china daughter, who did not seem to be anywhere about. Ross was vexed to have been snatched from his book for this fruitless trip to the station. If Miss Eliza had postponed Arethusa's coming once more, she should have written them about it, or telegraphed; for they should surely have been notified.
As he passed Arethusa on his way out he saw that her grey eyes under their long black lashes (he noticed them first because they were such unusually beautiful eyes) were full of shining tears, some of which were beginning to roll, unashamed, down the girl's cheek. A damsel in distress always appealed to Ross, for no knight of the time of tournaments had no more real chivalry in his composition, and so he stopped.
"Could I help you in any way?" he asked courteously. "Are you in trouble?"
Arethusa was just on the point of seeking Mr. Cherry and his promised assistance, when out of the bleak expanse of that awful and lonely platform Providence had sent this other help: a Man with reassuring grey hairs and a smile which she could not possibly mistake for anything but kindness. She seized it gratefully: and there would be no embarrassment of a Mrs. Cherry connected with it. This new Man knew nothing of any Dream that had been shattered. And if he lived in Lewisburg, he most probably knew her father. Her experience with municipalities was that everybody in a town knew everybody else and all their affairs into the bargain. And she was far past remembering Certain Instructions in such a Crisis.
She turned to Ross, a tear-stained face on which her gratitude at his offer struggled with her woes and the Horror of the Situation.
"My ... my fa-ther...." she began brokenly, and then gulped, and stopped.
It sounded very much like a greeting of the man before her, but it was only that her unruly voice refused entirely to respond to her efforts to use it.
Ross's look searched her quickly, up and down. She was as unlike the child he had expected to find as he could have found in a day's long journey; but there could hardly be two sets of fathers and daughters in so similar a predicament in the same station.